Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Great Series Starter

Hell & High Water by Charlie Cochet

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Charlie Cochet is currently running a kickstart to fund special 10th anniversary editions of her THIRDS series, and in my excitement and anticipation I’ve decided to do a whole series re-read. Hell & High Water is the first book and introduces Dexter J. Daley as a detective working for the Human Police Force (HPF) who recently turned his partner in after he shot an unarmed Therian in the back. There is a lot of social conflict between Humans and Therians, and this translates to prejudice […]

Zombies, and cops, and religious zealots, Oh My!

Revival: Deluxe Collection, Volume 1 by Tim Seeley

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Do you like horror with romance, religion, horrific secrets and one crazy (and dead) poet? Then, you probably should read Revival: Deluxe Collection, Volume 1 (which includes volumes one to eleven). The gore and violence is borderline gratuitous at times and other times goes well over the decency mark. There is sex, drugs and probably some rock and roll (but I was too busy covering my virtual ears from the saw that’s (spoiler) chopping up a body, to notice). If you have any kind of […]

The Great Crime Boom

San Francisco Homicide Inspector 5-Henry-7 by Frank Falzon, Duffy Jennings

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As a homicide inspector in San Francisco during the 1970s and 80s, Frank Falzon investigated some of the most famous crimes of the decade, including the Night Stalker serial murders and the Moscone-Milk assassinations. I came to this book in a pretty serendipitous way. I’d just listened to an episode of My Favorite Murder in which the one of the hosts covered a case discussed in this book, which she’d come across because her cousin was a colleague of Falzon’s. Just a day later, when I […]

May-July Leftovers

There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History by Rory Carroll

City of Dreams by Don Winslow

Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright

Under Color of Law by Aaron Philip Clark

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins

Tripwire by Jack Reacher

Baby Moll by John Farris

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn by Thomas Boyle

The Laundromat: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich

X by Davey Davis

Our Last Season: A Writer, A Fan, A Friendship by Harvey Araton

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

Hard Rain by Samantha Jayne Allen

The Boys From Biloxi by John Grisham

Ex Machina Book Four by Brian K. Vaughan

Jacket Weather by Mike DeCapite

Straight Cut by Madison Smartt Bell

The Crust on Its Uppers by Derek Raymond

That Kind of Danger by Donna Masini

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

Spenser Confidential by Ace Atkins

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

Weyward by Emilia Hart

The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon, I Mean Noel by Ellen Raskin

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

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I usually do these at the end of the month but then I went through a big reading slump March-May. And then I roared back but realized I was behind. So apologies for this being so long. There Will Be Fire **** A good, readable text on a moment in history I knew little about. Even after reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, I still had a lot of problem keeping track of all the socio-political dynamics so it’s good that Rory Carroll makes it accessible […]

That’s a lotta corpses, bro

A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames

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I liked the other Jonathan Ames books I’ve read, and learned ten seconds ago that he’s the creator of Bored to Death, which, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a show on HBO Max (which I haven’t seen, but which multiple people have told me I’d like). Anyway. A guy named Happy Doll – for real, his parents named him that…seriously? a little much right off the bat – is an ex-cop who’s now a fairly unsuccessful, i.e., not busy,  private detective. A friend comes […]

Things Fall Apart

Norco '80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History by Peter Houlahan

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Before I get into the review itself I should mention that I’m not a true crime person, generally. True crime readers or podcast listeners would be more well-versed in how these books typically read or what kinds of details typically would be included in these kinds of stories. So, your mileage may vary. Ok, will all of that out of the way, here we go! Peter Houlahan’s Norco ’80 is the true story of how five men tried to rob a California bank in 1980. […]



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